


Line in the Sand

by a_certain_enthusiasm



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: AND PEGGY - oh wait Peggy's actually important for once, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, American Sign Language, F/M, Gen, Historical Age Differences, Historical Appearances Whenever Possible, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, how did my tagging get so bad so fast? honestly idk, so many name-drops it's not even funny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-06-07 15:42:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15222413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_certain_enthusiasm/pseuds/a_certain_enthusiasm
Summary: Jack crossed his fingers as his mind wandered to a house north and west of where he stood, where the machine his father had created and the man he still loved waited for him. The former had been broken until the day before, when he finally figured out and fixed what had gone wrong. The latter hadn’t Turned yet but had just reached the second stage of the illness. Unless the sisters agreed to come with him, the man he loved would inevitably either Turn or die - and that he would not allow to happen. Not on his watch.Before society had collapsed worldwide in the face of a disease that took control of its human host and turned it into little more than a wild beast in a rotting human skin, former senator Henry Laurens had invented a machine that could restore a sick or injured being to full health, even if they waited at death's door. The catch? In order for the machine to work, three of the same kind, whether human or animal, had to die for one of the same to be restored.Now, his son John plans to use the machine to both save the life and regain the affections of the man he still loves, even after the other had moved on long ago.Andnothingwill stand in his way.





	1. A Place of Safety

**Author's Note:**

> *For ease of reading, all dialogue will be written in English with English grammar. For non-English dialogue, the language used will be included in the dialogue tags for at least the first line and the words themselves will appear in **bold**.
> 
> *Inspired by the Hamilton AU animatic of “Ready As I’ll Ever Be” drawn by mushie r.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Schuyler sisters receive an offer.

Night of Sunday, June 15-Early Morning of Monday, June 16, 2031

“Hey. Peggy,” Angelica Schuyler said, tapping her youngest surviving sister on the shoulder. “It’s your turn.”

“Thanks.” Peggy said as she crawled out of her sleeping bag and rose to a standing position. She had been awake for about half an hour already, after waking up from a dream that had plagued her sleep off and on ever since the beginning of the year. Ever since the events in the nightmare had actually taken place.

_No, not a nightmare. Nightmares don’t show things that actually happened. Flashbacks do,_ Peggy thought. _My little sister_ had _gotten hurt. Her injury_ had _gotten infected. I_ had _believed she was getting better. So did Eliza, after I told her that Nellie’s fever had broken._

As tears threatened to fall, she opened the tent flap and stepped outside. _Don’t think about it,_ she told herself. _There’s a time and a place to work through it, but here is not the place, and now is not the time._

She quickly reached a spot where she could see the entire clearing. The clearing itself was less than fifty feet in diameter, much smaller than the one the main base was located in, and surrounded by trees on all sides. Someone had lived there recently - that much was certain, since the buildings there still stood in fairly good condition - but the former residents had either Turned or fled sometime before the sisters had arrived. Even so, there was no real point in using the house when they had brought a tent along with them, especially when the main damage to said house was a missing door and several windows broken beyond repair.

The three of them had been there for about a month and a half, having left base camp for their current site less than a quarter-mile away after Alexander Hamilton’s departure. Rumor had it that he had been bitten in the skirmish that happened less than a week before that, but left camp and put a bullet through his brain before he’d had the chance to Turn.

Considering how retellings of events sometimes got distorted so fast it made her head spin, Peggy still wasn’t exactly sure how this could have stayed so similar for so long. Sure, the suicide bit had been added to the original later on, but that was the only change that she knew of.

_Focus,_ she told herself. _You’re supposed to be keeping watch, not dwelling on a camp rumor._ Especially  _not one about your own brother-in-law._

_At least Eliza hasn’t heard all of what they’re saying. She hasn’t come to base camp at all these past couple weeks, not even for Reverend Seabury’s sermons._

So she watched. Then waited. Then watched some more.

Several hours passed. Nothing happened. All was still.

Until she suddenly heard footfalls behind her.

Peggy slowly turned to face the sound, every sense on alert. The steps were slow and a bit irregular, but quiet, as if whoever was coming was actually _trying_ to be stealthy. A zombie’s footsteps were usually either loud and irregular or quiet and regular, depending on how severely affected the zombie was. _Whoever they are, they’re probably intact._

Even then, she knew very well that there were some that would take advantage of the times to do whatever they pleased, no matter what the consequences to anyone else.

In an instant, she pulled her pocketknife out of the pocket of her black leather jacket and opened it up in one fluid motion so that the blade pointed toward the figure entering the clearing. She had had quite a bit of practice with that particular move - Peggy preferred using a weapon she didn't necessarily need to aim, since hers was the worst between the three of them - since she and her older sisters had started living on their own.

“Who are you and what are you doing here?” she asked, just loud enough for whoever was coming to hear. There wasn’t any sense in speaking any louder than that, especially since they were outside, in the middle of the night, where a few zombies may or may not be within earshot.

Silence.

“Well, shit,” the figure eventually replied. “I didn’t expect to be held at knifepoint, but -”

Peggy knew that voice. A tenor one, with a slight Southern drawl...

“Jack! Where have you been?”

“- I guess I should've known to expect the unexpected,” John Laurens finished.

“Number one, how is it even possible to ‘expect the unexpected’, and number two, where have you been for the past month?” she asked as she closed the knife and put it back in her jacket pocket. “You scared us all half to death!”

“I actually don’t think it is, and I was at my old house.” He paused. “Well, my family’s old _second_ house, but that’s close enough.”

“So where are we, South Carolina?”

“Yes, actually. Just a few hundred feet away from its northern neighbor.”

“One minute.” Peggy jogged back across the clearing to the small tent where her older sisters slept.

“Angie! Liza!” she called out in a whisper as she entered the tent and shook the two of them awake.

“What?” Eliza asked, blinking her dark brown eyes. She hadn’t been asleep for long, worried as she’d been about her husband ever since he had disappeared a month and a half before. “Is it my turn?”

“No, not yet,” Peggy replied.  “Angie? You up?”

Angelica nodded as she pushed herself up into a seated position. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Jack’s come back!”

“You mean…”

“Yes! He’s here right now!”

In an instant, the elder two had jumped out of their sleeping bags and begun to scan the clearing in an attempt to spot him in the pale, watery moonlight filtering through the clouds above them. They did spot him eventually, but only after they figured out that they had started off looking in the wrong direction.

As soon as they spotted him, they ran to him, peppering him with whispered questions: “Where were you?” “What have you been doing for the past month?” “Does Base Camp know you’ve come back?” “How did you know we were here?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, I can’t answer all of you at once,” he said to the sisters. _Just like how you would’ve before you left. Good._

The questions stopped for a second before starting up again, one at a time.

“Jack,” Eliza began, “what have you been doing for so long?”

“Well, I was making improvements to my family’s old second home, fortifying it, that sort of thing. That’s where I was and why I took so long coming back.” _Too formal. Can’t let them see that anything’s different about me._

“What for?” Angelica asked.

_Or maybe that was fine. Maybe it_ wasn’t _too formal._ “Well, in case I wanted to settle down instead of moving from place to place to stay a step ahead of all the zombies around here. Or even if I wanted to help someone else with the same thing.

“Now that I think about it, this is just what I wanted to talk to you all about.” _Okay. Now get to the point._ “I was wondering if you wanted to stay there for a while. It’s perfectly safe - no zombie is ever gonna be able to get inside, and neither will anyone who doesn’t know about what I’ve put in.”

“As in…” Eliza said.

Jack shrugged. “Hidden entrances, traps, that sort of thing. You can’t be too careful - not at a time like this.” _Did I say too much? ... Nah. This was fine._

The moment he saw nervous expressions form on the sisters’ faces, he quickly tried to reassure them, saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll show you where they all are when we get there.” _Hopefully that wasn’t_ too _much of a risk._

The three sisters looked at each other for a moment before Angelica asked him, “Do we need to decide now?”

“Nah, you don’t have to decide right away,” Jack replied. “Take all the time you need.” _Alrighty then. Now all I'll have to do is watch and wait._

“Alright.” “Okay.” “Good.” The three women turned and walked to the other side of the clearing. The space wouldn’t offer a whole lot of distance, but it would be enough for the sisters to talk privately.

“So,” Angelica said once they stopped, “what do you think? Should we accept the offer or not?”

“Well,” Peggy began, “Jack _is_ a good friend of ours, and I don’t see a reason not to trust him - ”

“You thought the same thing about André,” Angelica interrupted. “You and Eliza both did.” John André had first joined them during their flight from their old home after helping them fight a pack of zombies in the Pennsylvania countryside. After that, he stayed with them for only a few days before Angelica caught him stealing from their supplies. That night, the rest of the group had continued south, leaving André behind.

“That was different,” Peggy protested. “All we had to go on with him was a first impression, and his was a pretty damn good one.”

“Language, Peggy.”

“What does it matter? And besides, you trusted him too. We all did, after he basically _saved our lives_ back in Pennsylvania.”

“Cut it out, both of you!” Eliza said, raising her voice to match her sisters’ volume. “That was months ago. It’s over, it’s done, it doesn’t matter now.”

Eliza continued, more quietly this time: “And when it comes to Jack’s offer, I’d have to agree with Peggy. I’d be willing to trust a family friend, and if he can help us find Alexander, all the better.”

Angelica replied, “I know you’ve been worried about him - we all have been, trust me - but just because both of them have been g - _away_   for a while now doesn’t mean Jack will even know if Alexander’s still _alive_ , much less where he is.“

“I’d think he’d have a better idea of it than anyone else in the area.”

“‘A better idea of it’ may not mean he actually _knows_. Besides...” Angelica paused for a moment before saying, “Something about this doesn’t feel quite right to me. I don’t know what it is _exactly_ , but something just feels...off.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s just you being paranoid,” Eliza replied. “But if something _is_   wrong, we should be able to get out of it fairly easily, since we’ll at least have _some_ idea of how to get back.”

“And if nothing else, this could be better for Eliza,” Peggy interjected. “She’s been feeling under the weather recently. It’s been at least for a couple days, from what I’ve seen.”

“Actually, it’s closer to a couple _weeks_ ,” Eliza said. “Though I didn’t start out feeling that bad, so -”

“ _Elizabeth Hamilton_ ,” Angelica said, “you’ve been sick for the past _two weeks_ \- if not longer - and didn’t even think to tell _your own sisters_ that anything was wrong?!”

“I just didn’t think it was necessary then,” Eliza replied, a bit sheepishly. “There were other things that we had to worry about.”

“Don’t act so surprised, Angie,” Peggy said as she glanced at her oldest sister, who was currently struggling to act like she _wasn’t_   surprised - and, as usual, clearly failing miserably. “This isn’t the first time she’s pulled something like this.”

“I know, I know, and everyone and their mother keeps telling me to stop,” Eliza said. “But let’s get back to the topic. Are we going to stay where we are or accept the offer?”

“I’d be willing to go,” Peggy replied.

“I think we already knew that,” Eliza said. “And I feel the same way.”

She glanced back at her older sister. “Angelica? Your thoughts?”

“Hmm…” Angelica ran a hand through her curly red-gold hair, looking off to one side as she weighed the pros and the cons of going along with the offer. On the one hand, they would be quite a bit safer in a house than out in the open like they were right then. This was pretty substantial in and of itself, even if there was no other benefit to herself and her little sisters. On the other, though, there was still that nagging feeling…

Some of her sisters’ words came back to her at that moment, unexpected and unbidden: _But if something_ is _wrong, we should be able to get out of it fairly easily…Jack_ is _a good friend of ours...I’d be willing to trust a family friend…_

Angelica looked back at Peggy and Eliza. She had made her decision.

* * *

Jack watched the conversation from a short distance away as the night darkened further and listened to the rise and fall of the three sisters’ chatter. It had risen a couple times into argument, but both times, the women’s voices had quieted down fairly quickly after one of them - Eliza, most likely - put her two cents in. Even before the pandemic, she had always been the peacemaker among her siblings; it made sense that she would stay that way.

Some movement from across the clearing alerted him to the conclusion of their meeting. As the three of them walked toward him, he asked, “What’s the verdict? Are you coming along or not?”

Almost instinctively, he crossed his fingers behind his back as his mind wandered to a house north and west of where the four of them stood, where the machine his father had created and the man he still loved waited for him. The former, which had the potential to cure the disease that had brought an end to the world as the survivors knew it, had been broken until the day before, when he finally figured out and fixed what had gone wrong. The latter, who Jack had found less than a week earlier bloodied and bruised and bitten, hadn’t Turned yet but had just reached the second stage of the illness. Unless the sisters agreed to come with him, the man he loved would inevitably either Turn or die - and _that_ Jack would _not_ , under _any_ circumstances, allow to happen. Not on his watch.

Jack blinked, his mind returning to the present as Angelica took a step forward. “We’ve decided,” she said to him, “to accept your offer.”


	2. As Hope is Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which one of the people involved in the search for Alexander gives up on finding him.

Morning of Monday, June 16, 2031

“Dad? ... Daaaad.”

Hercules Mulligan opened his blue-gray eyes and, while still lying atop his sleeping bag, glanced in the direction that his son John’s voice had come from.

“Morning, JJ,” he said, using the nickname his older son had chosen in preschool a couple years earlier. Before the world as the Mulligan family and every other survivor had known it had shattered into a million pieces around them.

_No, not shattered. Melted down, and waiting to be recast into something better than it was before._

Hercules smiled sadly, realizing that Alexander would probably start off with something like that if someone told him that there was no point in even attempting to rebuild a world already broken beyond repair. Even when the two of them had first met several years earlier, he had seemed to have one eye on the future, setting goals and doing everything he could to reach them. And even after society collapsed in the face of the epidemic - almost no one in the group, much less Alex himself, had ever referred to it as an _apocalypse_ \- it didn’t take long for him to turn his attention to more than just survival. Just a week or two after his arrival there the previous February, he had both begun to write a journal about day-to-day life  & what he’d seen of the world before its collapse and convinced Samuel Seabury to start preaching again after finding out that Seabury had been an Episcopal pastor prior to the pandemic. These were just a couple of the many tasks he had involved himself with, most of them with Eliza helping him and making sure he didn’t make himself sick from exhaustion, over the few months that they had spent at the site. Before Alex had disappeared into thin air. Before Eliza and her sisters had gone off to live on their own, returning only for a short time every Sunday morning.

“Earth to Dad,” JJ said, waving his hand in front of his father’s face. “You OK?”

He blinked, his train of thought disrupted. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

As he sat up, he asked his older son, “Did Will wake you up again?”

“No,” JJ replied. “I woke up before him this time.”

“You did?” Usually, six-month-old William was the first to awaken in the mornings, followed by his parents and his older brother shortly afterward.

‘Yep. He woke up Mama, though.” All of a sudden, the six-year-old’s brown eyes began to sparkle just a little more than usual, and the corners of his mouth rose upward into a mischievous grin. “You’re it!” he called out as he tapped his father’s shoulder and darted out through the open tent flap.

“This _again_?” he asked absentmindedly as he grabbed a shirt at random from the small pile of folded clothes at his feet and pulled it on over the white tank top and green athletic shorts he was already wearing. He and his family may be living in a campsite somewhere in the South, and it may be just days away from the beginning of summer, but he still had _some_ standards. Besides, the weather over the past few nights had been much cooler than expected for the location and the time of year, and this one appeared to be no exception.

“Yeah, it looks that way,” his wife, Elizabeth, replied, sitting cross-legged behind him as she began to burp Will halfway through his feeding.

“And it looks like I’m on my own here, right, Liz?” Hercules asked as he glanced back at his wife.

“Is it that obvious?” she replied, the smile evident in her voice making it clear that she was joking.

He began to stand up, letting out an exaggerated sigh of more-or-less mock annoyance. “I love you too, L - ahh!” he said, surprised when the top of his head brushed the top of the tent when he was still partway bent over at the waist.

“What? Did a spider get in or something?” Liz asked, startled by the sound and unsure of what happened to warrant it.

“No, the top was just lower than it appeared,” Hercules replied, ducking down slightly to avoid the tent’s ceiling.

“Oh. Okay,” Liz replied. “Like it always is.”

 _This was fun the first time JJ tried to rope me into a game of tag first thing in the morning a couple days ago,_ Hercules thought as he took the first few steps toward the entrance. _Heck, it was still sorta fun the second time around. But now? It’s starting to get old._

He stepped out of the tent and looked around. The campsite stood within a clearing in the shape of a figure-eight, with a paved road that entered on the east side of the southern half and crossed over the narrowest part to form the west edge of the northern half before continuing on. Most of the residents lived in the northern part, in tents that they had brought along with them or in temporary shelters of branches and leaves that they built after their arrival. A few of the residents lived in the southern half, near the “bottleneck” of the clearing. However, much of that section was left as open space for meetings and church services and anything else it might be needed for.

The twenty or so men and women in their little band had stayed there for about two and a half months, the longest they had spent in any one place since the collapse. The location had been just about perfect: trees and brush growing close together completely surrounded it for a long ways around except for at the two spots where the road entered and exited, offering some protection against zombies or unscrupulous people trying to make their way inside; it was plenty big enough to hold everyone, with lots of room to grow; and several clusters of abandoned houses sat less than a mile away, with food and other supplies somehow still plentiful in more than one of them. The only problem? The road itself created a few points of vulnerability, like where it entered and exited the clearing. Nevertheless, that area had been one of the best locations the group had chosen so far. Hence the reason why they all had stayed there for so long.

 _It doesn’t look like he’s over here,_ he thought as he scanned the northern section. _If he’s not in the other half, I swear..._

He stepped onto the road and sprinted down it into the southern half, stopping to catch his breath at the point where the road began to turn right before continuing out of the clearing. Glancing toward a couple of voices shouting and laughing on his left, he spotted the six-year-old running around in the field, with three-year-old Anastasie du Motier chasing after him.

Hercules breathed a small sigh of relief. If Ana was there with his son, then one - or both - of her adoptive parents was sure to be there as well, supervising the two of them and making sure they stayed in sight.

Sure enough, after a second or two, he spotted Gilbert and Adrienne du Motier sitting and talking on one side of the meeting space, with their eighteen-month-old son rising to his feet at his mother’s side.

“Hey Gil, Adrienne, Georges,” he called out as he strolled over to the three of them. “How’re you all doing?”

“ **Hi!** ” Georges said in French as he waved enthusiastically in Hercules’ direction. “ **I’m happy. How are you?** ”

“English, please,” Adrienne reminded her son.

“ **But _why,_ Maman?**” Georges asked as he looked back toward his mother, confusion plainly visible in his big brown eyes. “ **Hercules knows what I say.”**

“Yes, I know he does, but not every person here _would_ know.” Other than the du Motiers, only a few people in the group knew more than a little French. Alexander had been completely fluent since he was a child, Theodosia and Hercules both could understand most of the language, and Liz knew some but was nowhere close to being fluent, but they were the main exceptions. Several of the rest, like Washington and Maria, didn’t speak a single word of it.

“ **Alright** ,” the little boy said before facing forward again and switching over to English. “I’m...OK. And you?”

“Good job, Georges!” Gil said, a smile audible in his lightly accented voice. So far, his son had had more trouble with English than with French since he had first begun to talk the previous November. He already could say about forty words, some in French and some in English, and probably could understand more than that. He already understood that some of the words he knew at his age were in one language and some were in another. He already knew the names of both of the languages he had begun to learn. However, his English vocabulary was still less extensive than his French one, which made it more difficult for him to express himself in the former. This situation would most likely change with time, but the sooner that that happened, the better.

“I’m doing just fine,” Hercules replied as he crouched down to meet the small child’s eyes. “Thank you for asking me.”

Adrienne smiled, pleased at how well her son was doing so far. “So what do you say now?” she asked. After all, there was still a bit more left to be said.

“Umm...” Georges pulled on his light brown bangs as he thought for a moment, not quite remembering what he needed to say next. “...You’re welcome?”

“Yes! Well done!” Adrienne said, clapping her hands in praise. Her son was really doing quite well, considering that he was only a year and a half old.

“Georges is growing up to be quite the gentleman,” Hercules said to the boy’s proud parents.

“Yes, that he certainly is,” Gil replied. Had the du Motiers needed to face this topsy-turvy world alone, the way they would have shown their son and daughter how to interact with others would likely have been quite different. Anyone other than the family would presumably be regarded with either suspicion or outright hostility depending on whether they were clearly infected and why they were in the area, and anybody one of the four ever chose to trust would have to earn it - and _that_ would be far easier said than done. Since they were in a larger group, however, there wouldn’t be as much of a need to be distrustful of other people. Sure, keeping newcomers at arm’s length for a little while was still a good idea. After all, some time was necessary to make sure the newcomers didn’t carry any diseases, especially not the one that everyone in the group had only recently fled from, and that their reasons for coming weren’t nefarious. However, in their current situation, there was no need to be wary of _everyone_ who happened to cross their path. “Though that may not last once he reaches his, ah...”

“Terrible Twos?”

“Yes. Yes, exactly.”

Georges took a couple steps forward before falling down onto his back. A few seconds later, he was already sitting back up again.

The adults sat in a comfortable silence for a few seconds before Hercules asked Gil and Adrienne how they themselves had been.

 “Gil and I have been well,” Adrienne replied as she ran a hand through her messy blonde hair. “At least, as well as we can be, under the circumstances.”

The young woman glanced back to where her adopted daughter and her daughter’s friend played in the open field, a distant expression perceptible in her almond-shaped eyes as she recalled how she and her sisters used to play when she herself was just a little girl living in Ayen. Her older sister, Anne-Louise, had always been the one to put into action the crazy schemes Françoise or Dominique would dream up and take part in. Sometimes Adrienne would join them in their games, even though she had much preferred to do things like host “tea parties” or play “house” or “school” with some of her stuffed animals - and sometimes her parents - as the guests or the pupils. Luckily for Adrienne, her youngest sister, Angélique, had come to share those interests and had been more than happy to spend time playing those sorts of games with her.

When Hercules asked if there had been any news about Alexander, Adrienne found herself jerked back into the present as if someone had thrown a bucketful of water in her face.

“About...Alex?” Adrienne asked an instant before realizing that she had basically echoed the end of Hercules’ question.

Ever since Alexander had disappeared, both she and her husband - Gil especially, since he and Alexander had been as close as brothers ever since the two of them had met in college several years earlier - had been worried sick about him. Whenever either of them had the chance, one of them would join Aaron and Washington in the search while the other would stay behind to look after the home and children. Even after a month and a half of searching, though, none of them had found any sign that he was anywhere in the area.

“Yes. Do you have any news?” Hercules asked again. “Aaron and Washington haven’t said a thing.”

“That’s because we have not found Alexander,” Gil replied. He sat slumped against the outside of his family’s tent, a defeated look evident in his differently-colored eyes. “And I don’t want to say this - I do not even want to _think_ this...”

He rubbed his eyes, first his brown one, then his gray one.

“But from what we’ve seen...” He took a deep breath before he continued, “I don’t believe we ever will.”


	3. Without a Trace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Schuyler sisters' sudden departure is first discovered by a base camp resident.

Morning-Late Afternoon of Monday, June 16, 2031

“Hey, PJ,” John Bradstreet Schuyler called out to his younger brother as he emerged from the tent he shared with him, “how’s breakfast coming?”

“Almost done,” Philip Jeremiah replied as he flipped the pancakes he had cooking over what was left of the early morning campfire. The still-usable premade batter, among others, had been quite a lucky find after living on nothing but jerky and dried fruit in the few days before the last supply run two weeks earlier.

PJ picked up the yellow jug the batter had come in and looked inside. The moment he looked through the opening, the thirteen-year-old could see that there was only enough left in the jug for one more batch. Two if he got creative. So it wouldn’t surprise him if there were other things the brothers were about to run out of as well.

“Brad,” PJ said as he closed the jug and set it down beside him, “how are we doing for food?”

“Didn’t you see the food stores when you got the batter out?” his older brother asked in reply.

“Well, yeah, but I was just looking for the batter. Would you check?”

“Oh, alright, I’ll look.”

Brad walked back behind the tent, where the coolers sat next to each other between the back of the tent and the trees that marked the edge of the clearing. He unlatched the first one and opened it up. There wasn’t much in there, just a mostly empty container of vegetable soup mix and an opened bag of dried pineapple. The other two were similarly close to empty, collectively holding enough food for, at most, another three days. _Looks like I’ll need to do another supply run,_ Brad thought as he closed and re-latched the coolers before coming back to where his brother cooked breakfast in front of the tent.

“So?” PJ asked as he checked the pancakes - which had just finished cooking - and slid them out of the pan onto two plain white paper plates. “How are we?”

“We don’t have enough for more than a few days,” Brad replied as he sat down beside his brother and took one of the plates for himself.

“You going on a supply run today?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know who I’d go with -“

“What, you’re not going with Maria?” Three months earlier, when thirteen-year-old Maria Lewis was first admitted, Brad had been one of the first people in the group that she had had the chance to meet. In that span of time, the two of them had gone from acquaintances to close friends - as in, almost joined-at-the-hip close - and from there to boyfriend and girlfriend, which was where they had been at for almost six weeks.

So it was a bit startling to PJ that his fifteen-year-old brother _apparently_ didn’t automatically think to see if his girlfriend wanted to go with him. Especially since the group had voted fairly early on to make the buddy system a requirement for any instance when any of them needed to leave the grounds.

“As I was saying,” Brad said, the annoyance he felt at that moment showing only slightly in his baritone voice, “I wouldn’t know who I’d go with _if Maria couldn’t come with me_. Seriously, PJ, you need to stop with the interruptions. You’ve been doing that for literally _years_ , and -“

“Yeah, I know, I need to figure out how to stop doing that because I won’t get the full story if I start talking in the middle of it, yada yada yada, thank you _so much_ for telling me that for the millionth time -“

“- _Aaaaaand_ here we go again,” Brad said as he stood up, his plate held in one hand and the food on it still untouched. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Hold down the fort for me, will ya?” He stepped inside the tent, grabbed his dark blue backpack, and slung it over one shoulder before stepping back outside.

“Alright.” That was how these things would work out for the most part. Brad would go on the supply runs with Angelica or Maria, depending on who was available to go with him, while PJ - and Peggy, when she and her sisters had lived there - would stay behind.

“Okay, thanks.”

Brad ambled away from the tent toward the southern half of the clearing, eating the two now-cold pancakes on his paper plate as he walked. The sun shone warm upon the area and a light breeze blew across it, making for, in his own opinion, perfect weather. Too bad that it reached that phase so early in the day, since it would only get warmer from here.

He had just gotten past the bottleneck when he and his girlfriend collided with each other, making the two of them fall to the ground.

“Oh my God, oh my - I am _so_ sorry,” Maria said as she brushed herself off. “I wasn’t looking where I was going, and I didn’t realize you were _right there_ -“

“It’s OK, it’s OK, Ria, no need to apologize,” Brad replied as he stood up and offered a hand for Maria to pull herself up with. “I wasn’t exactly paying attention either.”

Maria took her boyfriend’s hand and pulled herself up. “So where are _you_ going this fine morning?” she asked, still holding on to his hand. “Off on another supply run?”

“Yes, actually,” Brad replied. “And I know, the last one was just a couple weeks ago, but PJ and I are almost out already, so...”

“I swear, at the rate you and PJ are going, you could eat your whole family out of house and home.”

Brad glanced away, his brown eyes distant. As far as he knew, PJ and his older sisters and brother-in-law were the only family he had left. His parents had Turned the Christmas before, less than two weeks after Eliza and Alexander’s wedding. His younger sister, Cornelia, had died a few days after the New Year, after a scraped elbow became infected despite every effort to prevent that and control it after it began. His youngest brother, Rensselaer, had reached the second stage of the same disease that had taken his parents at the end of January and had been left behind on the southern bank of Lake Erie. Neither he nor his surviving siblings had received any word from their aunts or uncles or cousins or any of the friends that they had left behind in their flight from Albany.

“Did I...say something wrong?” Maria asked after a second or two.

Brad shook his head. “No, you didn’t. I’m just worried about my sisters, that’s all.”

“How about we go check on them when we get back? Would that help?”

Brad nodded. “Yeah,” he replied. “It would.”

Maria stood up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “Let’s go, then!”

In an instant, she had taken off running toward the southern exit, the boy she loved following close behind her.

* * *

A few hours later, when the sun had already passed its peak, the two of them had taken what they could carry - and what Brad could fit in his backpack - out of an abandoned house that sat a couple miles south of the clearing. After two and a half months of twenty-plus people staying in the same place, relying solely on gleaning food and other supplies from the many abandoned homes in the area for survival, the group had all but exhausted the closest locations. Hence the reason they had ventured so far away in the first place.

Maria set her armload of cans and boxes down on the front porch. “Man, it’s hot out here,” she said, fanning herself with the neckline of her faded red crop top. It hadn’t been the best thing for her to wear outside the clearing - especially without a protective jacket over it - but it _was_ her favorite shirt out of the clothes she had.

“You can say _that_ again,” Brad replied as beads of sweat formed on his forehead.

He surveyed the boxes and bags he held in his arms and his now-full backpack hanging off his left shoulder. “This should be enough for at least another week or two,” he said to himself.

“We should be getting back,” Maria said. “We were going to go check on your sisters, remember?”

“Mhm,” Brad replied. “We’d better go, then. You need any help with that?” He pointed one foot toward the pile Maria had gathered for herself.

“No, thanks,” she replied as she picked up what she had gathered by the package of pads at the bottom of the pile. “I can handle this just fine. But thanks for asking me instead of swooping in and trying to carry it all yourself on top of what you’re already carrying.”

“Wait, that actually happened?” Brad asked as he slowly and carefully made his way down the front steps to the driveway below.

“Oh, just once that I remember. It was during my first supply run with you guys, when I went with John.” Maria followed him down the steps and continued to the edge of the driveway.

“Prevost?”

“The one and only. Anyway…” Maria and Brad continued on down the road, going back the way they came. “He’d already had a full backpack, and his hands were already full, like yours are right now. He offered to carry my supplies on top of his own, even though he clearly could not hold any more than he already was.”

“Then why did he ask in the first place?”

She shrugged slightly. “I don’t know. Whatever it was, it was definitely not the right time for that. Anyway, I politely said ‘no’ the first and second times that he asked, but got sick of it by the third request. Long story short, I handed off my loot for him to carry just to get him to stop asking. The second he received it, everything he carried - and I mean _everything_ \- fell right out of his arms and onto the ground in front of him. Nothing broke, thank God, but he didn’t try _that_ again.”

“I can see why,” Brad replied through a fit of laughter as the two of them turned onto another road. “That was pretty dumb, trying to take on so much more than he could handle like that.”

“True. At least he knows his limits now, though.”

“I’d hope so after _that_ fiasco,” Brad said, now a bit calmer than he had been earlier. “Any other stories you want to tell?”

“Oh, yes,” Maria answered, her blue eyes sparkling. “There was one time - not long before I came here - when…”

* * *

Almost before either of them knew it, they had somehow reached the south entrance with no real trouble. No unscrupulous survivor seeing them as an easy mark. No wild animal looking for food. No zombie trying to attack, to spread the illness that had stolen their souls, their humanity, from them. Just themselves, their cargo, and an empty road to walk on.

“I don’t know about you,” Maria said as the two of them stepped into the clearing, “but I was kind of expecting something to happen out there on the road.”

“Like what? A lone survivor driving right into our path or something?” Brad asked.

“No, I haven’t seen any survivors outside the group since we came here. Have you?”

“Hmm…I don’t think so. Unless you count the zombies I’ve seen around here. You didn’t count those, did you?”

“No. Why would I when they’re all but dead anyway?”

“Fair point.”

The two stopped at Maria’s shelter, which was little more than a gray tarp held up above the ground with five or six strategically placed branches. “I’ll meet you up at the top,” Maria said before she ducked inside. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” Brad replied as he continued on to his own tent near the north end of the clearing.

A minute or two later, he reached his shelter, where his younger brother waited in front, tapping his foot as he stood with his arms crossed in front of him. “Where have you been?!” PJ asked.

“On a supply run,” Brad replied as he set down what he held in his arms next to the tent’s entrance and unslung his backpack from his shoulder.

“I know that, but you said you’d be back home in ‘a few hours’, _not_ that you’d come back right before sundown!”

Brad looked up at the sky to see that yes, the colors he could see corresponded with the beginning of sunset.

PJ’s next words were deliberately quiet: “I was worried about you, Brad. From the moment you walked out of the clearing. And the longer you stayed away, the more worried I got. That you or Maria had gotten attacked, or…” He fell silent for a second or two. “You’re the only brother I’ve got, now that…Well, I don’t want to lose anyone else. Understand?”

“Yeah,” Brad replied before asking his younger brother, “Did you see our sisters at church yesterday?”

“Just Angelica. I didn’t see Peggy or Eliza,” PJ replied.

“So I wasn’t hallucinating. Okay.” Brad ran a hand through his brown hair at the places where it stuck to his skin. “Maria and I are going to go check on them. I’ll be back soon, OK?”

“Then here.” PJ tossed a flashlight to his older brother. “You’ll need this. You have a gun on you?”

Brad caught the flashlight easily, despite the lowering light. “It’s in my pack.”

“Take it with you, then. I’m not letting you leave here without it.”

“I’m the older one here. Why is it that _you’re_ telling _me_ what to do?” Brad asked his brother jokingly as he removed a pistol from the side pocket of his backpack.

“Well, _some_ body has to keep everything on track, and I’m the one with his feet on the ground here. You…well, that’s another story entirely,” PJ replied, his good humor more or less restored.

“Hey!”

“It’s true.”

Brad sighed dramatically. “Okay, whatever you say, Junior.”

PJ ignored the nickname.

Brad set the flashlight down on the ground and inspected the gun he was holding. He didn’t see any damage from the outside, the safety was still on, and when he checked the magazine in the grip, he saw all eight rounds still inside. _One less thing to worry about,_ Brad thought as he slid the magazine back inside the grip and picked up the flashlight again.

He turned the flashlight on. “See you when I get back,” Brad called out as he began to walk to the northern exit.

“Alright. Stay safe,” PJ replied.

“I’ll try.”

Maria was already standing at the exit when he arrived.

“Did I keep you waiting?” Brad asked.

“No. I just got here a minute ago,” she replied.

“Okay then. Let’s go!"

* * *

After a few minutes of pushing through close-set trees and bushes single-file after leaving the road, the two of them reached the plot of land that Brad’s older sisters had been residing in. “Stay here,” he told his girlfriend. “Let me know if you see anything.”

“Alright,” Maria replied as she turned her own flashlight on.

Brad shifted the beam of his flashlight toward the tent that sat right in the middle of the area. There weren’t any holes or tears in it. The windows were all covered. The area around it was extremely clean, with not a single item of the sisters’ sitting near the tent as far as he could see.

_Wait._

He walked around the tent, scanning the entire area. Not a single thing stood outside the tent, not even a cooler or two that the three would have brought here with them.

A strange feeling began to curl up in the pit of Brad’s stomach. “Angelica? Eliza? Peggy?” he called out as he walked around to the tent entrance.

No response.

He tried again. “Angie? Eliza? Peggy?”

Still, nothing but silence.

“Rita? You there?” Every time he wanted to annoy or just get a response out of Peggy, he would call her that. His twenty-two-year-old sister still borderline hated the name Margarita, which she just so happened to be saddled with, so calling her Rita was sure to get a rise out of her.

This time, though, he didn’t hear a thing in reply. Nothing but a light breeze whistling through the trees behind him.

The strange feeling in his stomach intensified.

He arrived at the tent entrance. He turned his flashlight off and let it fall from his hand. He reached for the zipper at the top of the opening. He grabbed on to it and pulled downward to open the entryway.

His breath caught in his throat at what his dark eyes showed him.

The tent was completely empty. No backpacks. No pillows. No sleeping bags.

His sisters - all three of them - were gone.


	4. The Sisters' Arrival

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which, for the first time since their flight from Albany, the Schuyler sisters have some of the trappings of their former lives again.

Afternoon of Monday, June 16, 2031

"Almost there," Jack called out from the front of the group as the four of them turned right, following the curve of the road ahead. They had already arrived in North Carolina, on the outskirts of a small town near its southern border.

The three sisters visibly perked up at his statement, Eliza most of all. For most of the journey, she had been extremely sick to her stomach - to the point where she had no idea how she had kept anything down so far that day - and the heat and humidity weren’t helping matters one bit.

A split-second later, Eliza sprinted to the right side of the road and knelt down beside the ditch, gagging as she leaned over and threw up what remained of the jerky she had eaten not five minutes earlier. 

Both her sisters started rushing toward her the moment they spotted her hunched over by the side of the road. Angelica placed herself behind Eliza, gathering her sister's long nut-brown hair up and out of her face to keep it from getting even grimier than it was already.

"I've got it covered, Peggy," she said to her youngest living sister as she came up behind her. 

"You sure?" Peggy asked.

"Yes," was her oldest sister's reply.

"Alright." Peggy turned and walked back to where Jack stood next to the coolers they had brought along with them.

Angelica waited there until Eliza's vomiting subsided before asking her, "Do you need anything?"

Eliza sat up and turned toward her older sister. " **Water, please** ," she signed, her hands trembling ever so slightly. Even after she had stopped throwing up, she still didn’t trust herself to speak right then in case she started again.

"Okay." Angelica let go of her younger sister's hair, letting it fall over her back and shoulders. She took off her coral-and-white striped backpack and rummaged through it, soon finding a few full plastic water bottles in the side of the main compartment. “Here you are,” she said as she handed one to her sister.

_At the very least, it_ should _get rid of the_ awful _taste in my mouth,_ Eliza thought as she accepted the water bottle that her sister had offered her. “ **Thank you** ,” she signed with her free hand before she opened the bottle and hesitantly poured a little into her mouth. She swirled it around a bit before spitting it out into the ditch beside her.

As she stood back up again, she noticed that not only had the water done its job, but that she actually felt much better. Not completely - she still felt a little queasy - but definitely an improvement from earlier that day.

“How do you feel?” Angelica asked.

Eliza twisted the cap back onto the water bottle. “Better,” she replied. “And getting out of this heat will help even more.” She opened her blue-green messenger bag and placed the bottle inside before closing it again.

Angelica nodded. “True,” she said as she zipped her backpack closed and put it back on over her shoulders.

Eliza glanced back at where Jack and Peggy waited by the coolers in the middle of the empty road. “We should go back over there,” she said, gesturing toward where the two of them stood and talked as they waited for Angelica and Eliza to return.

After a moment, Angelica shrugged. “Let’s go, then,” she replied, despite her still wanting to turn back the way she and the others had come. _I can’t really do that, though,_ she thought. _My sisters are perfectly fine with going to this place, and it’s not exactly a smart idea to be out here alone._

The two of them walked back to where their sister and their friend waited for them.

“Eliza,” Jack said when the two arrived, “are you alright?”

Eliza looked up into his sky-blue eyes, finding in them what appeared to be genuine concern. “Better than I was,” she replied honestly. “I guess the heat just got to me.”

“Happens to the best of us,” he replied as he grabbed the handle of one of the coolers. “But are you sure you’re okay to keep going now?”

“Yes, I can keep going,” Eliza replied. “Didn’t you say we were ‘almost there’ just a few minutes ago?”

“I did,” he said, his voice suddenly clipped as he continued on toward the group’s destination. “And it’s true.”

“Alright.” The three sisters followed him, Peggy and Angelica right behind him and Eliza bringing up the rear.

A little while later, Angelica turned around to face Eliza. As she walked backward with the group, taking care to keep Peggy’s yellow backpack and the cooler she dragged behind her in her peripheral vision, she signed to her other sister, “ **That was a little weird**.”

“ **What was**?” Eliza asked.

“ **The way Jack talked to you** ,” she answered. “ **Asking _twice in a row_ if you were okay - not just once like he usually does - then suddenly getting so terse when you said yes the second time? I’d say that’s at least a _little_ strange for him**.” In the years that the sisters had been friends with Jack, they had only seen him irritated once or twice before. The three had seen him run the gamut of emotions - from grief when his mother died a month after his sister Mary was born, to jubilation when he got accepted into Columbia’s pre-med program, even to lingering anger after yet _another_ fight with his father - but almost never just annoyance or irritation.

After a moment, Eliza replied, “ **It’s definitely odd, I will admit that. The times have changed, though, and sometimes people change along with them**.”

“ **I know that, but it still seems weird to me. I’m probably just being paranoid, like you said earlier** -“

“We’re here!” Jack called out, unknowingly cutting Angelica off. He hadn’t looked back once, and even if he had, he likely wouldn’t have understood any but the simplest of signs. Understandable, since he hadn’t grown up in a home where fluency in ASL was more or less a necessity.

The four of them stopped. In front of them lay more open road. On their right stood nothing but plants and trees. However, on their left stood a black iron fence that more than likely surrounded the entire property, with a gate of similar appearance across the driveway that was nearly twice Jack’s height. Between the group and the gate, a keypad on a thick black pole waited to be used. None of them appeared broken or otherwise damaged.

_Looks like backing out will be harder than we expected_ , Angelica thought. After a moment, she added, _At least, it will if we don’t have the code._

She walked to a spot where she could clearly see the buttons on the keypad and watched closely as Jack strolled up to it. He punched in five numbers: 6, 2, 5, 0, and then 0 again.

She repeated the string of numbers in her mind over and over as the gate creaked open for them to enter.

The four of them, with Jack at the head, walked through the gate and up the driveway. The driveway curved a couple times, which made the uphill climb longer but somewhat easier to manage, and the shade from the somewhat overgrown trees on either side offered a welcome respite from the blazing sun they had walked under for at least a mile of the journey. As the four walked beneath the trees, though, their eyes had to adjust fairly rapidly to the sudden dimness they had entered in order to keep their footing.

After about ten minutes, they reached the end of the driveway, where a two-story house stood near the front of the open space it was situated in. The house itself was a fairly large one, in the shape of an L with a built-in two-car garage on one end and a section that rose a full story higher than the rest of it on the other. A skylight or two poked through the moss-covered green-and-gray roof, and the forest-green outer walls looked surprisingly well-maintained, with not a single place where the paint was scratched or peeling away. The bushes at the front looked equally well-cared for, every leaf a brilliant green and not a twig poking out from any of the shrubbery. On the main house’s right, a much smaller mother-in-law house sat at the edge of the clearing. Formerly run-down and in need of repairs, it now looked basically good as new.

“Wow,” Peggy said as she took in what had been done since she and her sisters had last stayed there the year before. “Did you do all of this?”

“Not all,” Jack replied. “I just took care of the outside. Well, that and the security.”

He walked up to a section of wall near one end of the structure, about ten feet to the left of the front steps, and pushed part of it in with his free hand. While he held that piece down, he gently nudged the section in front of him with his left foot, opening up a formerly hidden doorway.

“This,” he said as he pushed the cooler he’d been dragging during the journey up against the door, “is one of the three secret entries on the main level.” He pushed a coat aside just inside the entrance and opened up another door in front of it.

One at a time, the three sisters followed him through the coat closet that housed the doorway. Angelica brought up the rear, following close behind Eliza as she grabbed the cooler that Jack had left holding the door. As they walked from there into the living room, Jack continued, “The other hidden doors are at the ends of the two hallways on this floor.” They sat down, Jack and Peggy next to each other on a pristine off-white sofa, Angelica and Eliza opposite each other in matching sea-green armchairs. “There’s traps at every obvious entry, though, so you probably don’t want to go through those.”

“What kinds of traps?” Angelica and Eliza asked at the same time.

After a moment, Jack replied, “I don’t think it really matters. You know where they are, what entries they’re at. Do you really need to know what kind they are?”

Almost as soon as Eliza heard the words that came out of his mouth, she found that she better understood her older sister’s reluctance. For most of her life so far, she had been able to find out almost anything she wanted to know. Sure, her curiosity couldn’t hold a candle to Angelica’s, but it was still reassuring to know that there wasn’t any question she could ask that would be answered with a “You wouldn’t understand” or “You don’t need to know” - at least, without a _yet_ attached to either one. Having a simple question answered with a flat-out “Do you really need to know?” was a bit unsettling, to say the least. Especially coming from someone who hadn’t particularly liked that phrase himself.

“Sorry about that,” he said hurriedly, in an attempt to smooth things over. “I’ll show you to your rooms.”

“That would be nice,” Eliza replied.

Angelica and Peggy rose from their seats, voicing their agreement.

“Let's go, then.” Jack and Eliza stood up, and the four of them walked up the main staircase to the second floor.

At the top of the first flight of stairs, they turned right and into a short hallway. “All these rooms are open,” Jack said from the back of the group, “so you can spread out as much as you like. No need to all squeeze yourselves into one room here.” He laughed a bit at his own comment.

Angelica and Eliza couldn’t help but notice that his laugh sounded a little different than usual. Slightly stilted, a half-step or two lower than normal. Well, Angelica hadn’t noticed the change in pitch - she was slightly tone-deaf, so the difference in pitch was too small for her to detect - but she _had_ noticed the way it came out. Almost like the laugh had been forced.

Peggy probably hadn’t heard him at all, considering that she’d already gone into the bathroom. _She’s probably going through whatever makeup is in there right now,_ Eliza thought. Sometime in her early teenage years, Peggy had come to enjoy wearing makeup, and her appreciation of the stuff had only grown since then. Going nearly six months without wearing any had been difficult for her, so it was no real wonder that the moment she could access it again, she would take the opportunity and run with it.

“Actually, I’d rather each of you chose your own room. There won’t be any squabbles about who gets the bed that way,” Jack said.

“You haven’t complained when my sisters and I shared a room here before,” Angelica pointed out.

“Well,” Jack replied, “when you’ve stayed over before, you’ve come when my family was all here. Now, there’s...just me.” A look of sorrow crossed his face in the moment of hesitation. His mother had passed away a decade earlier, and his father had Turned before the two would have reconciled again. As for his brother and sisters, he had no idea where they were or whether they were even alive. No wonder he would have grown unhappy over his situation.

And it helped that that expression conveniently hid the fact that he had just spouted a bald-faced lie. “Besides, I’d hate to see all this space here just go to waste,” he continued, his voice suddenly lighter again.

“Anyway, dinner won’t be ready till around six or so, so go ahead and make yourself at home.”

Eliza began to ponder whether to ask him if he knew anything about where her husband was, but after seeing him make his way downstairs, she chose to wait until dinner. He seemed a bit preoccupied, and besides, she herself was tired to the bone. A nice, long nap would do her a world of good, and since dinner would be almost two hours away, she had plenty of time to rest.

She walked to the second door on the right-hand side of the hallway and opened it to find that the room it opened into was already prepared for a guest. The lavender walls and ceiling were pristine, with no visible damage or even cobwebs in the corners. The hardwood floor was clean and dry, without even a speck of dust over the top of it. The bed in the corner was already made up, without a single wrinkle in the sheets, and the dresser and desk against the opposite wall were in just as good of a condition as everything else in the room. Even the battery-powered lights hanging on the walls shone brightly enough to illuminate the entire space. Yet, there still appeared to be something off about the room. Something missing.

Eliza dropped her messenger bag next to the dresser and staggered over to the bed, collapsing on top of it as her exhaustion began to take over. A minute or two later, just as she was about to fall asleep, she realized what exactly it was she didn't see.

The room didn't have a single window.


	5. The Sickroom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack pays a visit to the man he loves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know I said I wouldn't be back before Christmas, but I couldn't stay away for long. At least it's better than missing the deadline. 
> 
> :-)

Afternoon-Evening of Monday, June 16, 2031

Jack lingered at the bottom of the stairs, leaning against a wall and covertly listening for activity on the floor above him. For what he needed to do, he had to be sure that all of the sisters were distracted, focused on anything other than him. He had already heard and seen Eliza go into one of the bedrooms, so there was probably no need to wait for her. The other two…well, Peggy didn’t appear to be worried or suspicious, but Angelica seemed to think that something was up. He’d have to keep a close eye on her.

_Actually,_ the young man thought, _by the time we all got inside, Eliza was like that, too. I’m pretty sure of it._

He paused.  _Then I suppose I'll just have to keep an eye on both of them,_ he thought as he ran a hand through his wavy blond hair. 

So he waited. 

A few minutes later, he heard the bathroom door open and close, followed a second or two later by one of the bedroom doors following suit across the hall.  _That was probably Peggy,_  he thought. He had seen her go into the bathroom when he and the sisters first entered the hallway, and from what he could hear through the door, she had probably been busy ransacking the drawers for makeup. Undoubtedly she would have taken some of those products into her chosen room with her.

Seconds later, he heard the bathroom door open and close again.  _Seems like all three are doing something else,_ he thought. _I’ll have to check, though, just to make sure._

He took his chance then, taking special care not to make a sound as he crept up the stairs to the second floor. By some stroke of luck, not one of the notoriously squeaky steps made the slightest noise under his feet.

At the top of the stairs, he stopped for a moment and peeked into the hallway. Seeing no one standing there and every door closed, he turned to face the next set of steps and continued on.

Just as he started to walk up the second flight, he heard a rush of running water coming from the bathroom.

_Perfect._ Even if he weren’t completely quiet going up, the noise from the shower would help to mask his steps.

He carefully tiptoed up the second flight of stairs, whose steps were far quieter as a general rule. Logical, considering the stairs led up to a couple of former guest rooms that really hadn’t been used very often. Even after he had moved his father’s creation there piece by piece from the mother-in-law house, he hadn’t gone up and down those stairs very often until after he rescued Alexander. After that - and even now - he had to go check on him several times a day, if only to tend to his injuries and make sure that he was still human.

Considering that he now had to keep the fact that his love was living on the top floor a complete secret from the other residents…That was going to be a problem.

_Just for a few days more,_ he said to himself. _Then - if all goes well - there’ll be no need to hide. It'll just be the two of us, and nothing else will matter._

Cheered by that thought, he continued on.

At the top of the stairs, he turned toward a small cupboard on his left and opened up the door. Various first-aid supplies, stockpiled over the years from the many times his family had stayed there, were situated inside it.

Peering into the cabinet, he grabbed everything he thought he’d need - two rolls each of gauze and medical tape, a box of disposable gloves, a small pair of scissors, an unopened tube of antibiotic cream, and several packets of antiseptic towelettes.

With the supplies cradled in one arm, he took a few steps forward and knocked on the door next to it. “Alexander?” he called out just loudly enough for the man he loved to hear.

For several seconds, he waited, hearing nothing but his own soft breathing.

“Alexander?” he repeated, more hesitantly than before. If the disease had taken his love’s voice from him, it would only be a matter of hours - maybe a day - before all was lost. Before it would be too late to save him.

“Come in,” a voice faintly replied from behind the door.

As he twisted the knob and pulled open the door, Jack released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

The room he entered was relatively plain, with cream-colored walls and thick tan carpet covering the floor. A queen-size bed sat in the farthest corner, the forest-green sheets wrinkled slightly but still neatly arranged over the top. Sunlight shining through the window on the far wall fully illuminated the desk, which had a few papers stacked in one corner and the rest scattered haphazardly over its surface.

Perhaps that had something to do with the fact that Alexander was sitting in front of it, with a half-filled sheet of paper in front of him and a blue ballpoint pen in his hand, writing like there was no tomorrow.

“Alexander.” Despite his every effort to appear stern at that moment, he couldn’t stop himself from smiling at the sight of the man he loved.

Alexander set down the pen and looked up from the paper. “Hey, Jack,” he replied, his tenor voice still surprisingly strong, considering what the illness had done to him already. His fiery red hair had grown long and dull, his fair skin an ashen gray. His frame, slim even before the outbreak, had become thinner than Jack had ever seen it turn out to be. Bandages and pieces of taped-on gauze wrapped around almost every part of his skin that the light blue nightshirt he wore didn’t cover. His eyes, the deep blue of a twilight sky, still retained their spark. However, judging by the other aspects of his condition, that likely wouldn’t last for long.

Jack’s grin left his face as quickly as it came.

“You should be resting.” He stepped inside the room, leaving the door open behind him.

“That’s a bit difficult,” Alexander replied, a wan smile crossing his face, “when you still have a million thoughts to convey, but only a short time left to convey them.”

“I know, but you still need to keep from tiring yourself out. Since you haven’t eaten anything for the past three days, it’d be a lot easier to get that way.” From what Jack had seen of it, complete loss of appetite was usually the first sign that the disease had reached its second stage. Loss of pulse, voice, and breathing usually followed within hours.

Yet Alexander had still managed to hold on, three whole days after reaching Stage 2.

If that wasn’t a miracle, Jack didn’t know what was.

“Is there any news from the outside?” Alexander asked as he turned fully in the chair and looked Jack in the eye.

Jack walked over to the desk and placed the medical supplies on an uncluttered corner. “None from the outside yet,” he said as he pulled on a pair of gloves. “But I do have some good news for you.” He took Alexander’s right arm in one hand and peeled away a piece of gauze above the elbow, taking care to minimize any pain the process would cause.

“What is it, then?”

“Did I ever say anything to you about a possible cure?” Jack glanced down at the now-uncovered wound. From what he could see, the inflammation around the bite had clearly gone down, and the injury generally appeared to be healing nicely.

“No,” Alexander replied. “Not that I remember. What would it involve?”

“Well,” Jack began, “several years ago, my father started work on a machine that would harness bioelectricity to speed up recovery from illness and injury.” He dropped the used gauze pad into a nearby trash can. “Eventually, he finished the machine and got it functioning so well that in the most recent tests, it only took about five to ten minutes for the receiver to come out good as new.” He let go of Alexander’s arm and began to prepare a new covering for the wound he had inspected.

_That’s not really the case for the donors, though,_ Jack thought. _That was one of the things Dad hadn’t been able to iron out before all this happened._

_And frankly, as long as Alexander is healed, I couldn’t care less about that._

“Wow,” Alexander responded. “That’s impressive. Why didn’t you say anything earlier about it?”

“I didn’t want to give you false hope.” Jack carefully placed the new covering over the injury. “But there’s no need to worry about that now.” As he pressed down on the tape, his gloved fingertips brushed against a patch of exposed skin, sending a pleasant shiver down his spine.

He paused before saying, “I’ve found the last thing I need to completely cure you.”

Alexander tilted his head. “Didn’t you say earlier that the machine was complete?”

“Yes,” Jack replied, “but it still needs a source of bioelectricity to do its job.”

“And I’m assuming you found one now?”

“Yes, I did find one.” _Three, technically, but he doesn’t have to know that right now._

“And has he or she agreed to participate?”

“Well…” Jack couldn’t help but think that the situation was turning into an interrogation. “I haven’t brought it up quite yet with her. She just got here, and is probably asleep right now, so I guess I’ll have to wait.” _True,_ he thought. He hadn’t brought up the machine with any of them, and all three had fallen asleep after arriving a short time earlier.

“Do you plan to mention it to her anytime soon?”

“Yes, by tomorrow morning at the latest,” Jack responded, despite the fact that he had no intention of saying a thing about it to the residents sleeping on the floor below. He did intend to lay out the house rules by then, but for his plan to work, he had to show them the machine before saying a word about it.

Alexander nodded, seemingly satisfied with the answers. “Okay, then. Is there anything else?”

After a moment, in which he checked and re-dressed a second injury on Alexander’s arm, Jack replied, “No, nothing else I have to tell. What have you been writing about?”

The deflection was successful. As Alexander began to describe the topics he had written about - almost all of them related to the rebuilding effort that he had formerly spearheaded - Jack tended to the rest of his many injuries, listening as he went along.

What felt like just a few minutes later, Jack looked up from the last dressing he applied to find that the sky had changed from its prior bright blue to a deep blue with just a few streaks of pink and orange near the bottom edge.

He hurriedly stood straight up and gathered the remaining supplies. "I didn't realize how long I took up here," he said. "I need to go make dinner for me and my other guest. Do you want anything?"

“Just some water,” Alexander replied.

_At least his need for liquids has stuck around,_ Jack thought. _Otherwise he might not have lasted even this long._ “I’ll get that for you soon.”

He turned around and walked out through the open doorway, unused supplies in hand before he put them back in the cabinet they had come from. As softly as he could - since the shower had been shut off hours earlier - he then made his way down the flight of stairs below him.

When he reached the second floor, he took off his gloves and started to weigh his options - _should I go see if they’re asleep or should I just leave them be_ \- before choosing the latter. If they weren’t asleep, one of them would probably go to him and ask him about dinner. If they were, there was no need to disturb their slumber.

He continued down the stairs and into the kitchen, his mind replaying the earlier conversation as he got out a cup and pitcher. 

_"It still needs a source of bioelectricity to do its job." ... "Yes, I did find one." ... “Do you plan to mention it anytime soon?” "Yes, by tomorrow at the latest." ..._

_I spoke pretty impersonally about the sisters,_ he thought. _I don’t think I’ve done that before._

_And I lied to Alexander. Twice. At least._

_Nice job, Jackie._

Some water from inside the pitcher splashed onto his hand, pulling him back out of his thoughts. 

He finished filling up the cup and brought it up the two flights of stairs to Alexander’s room.

“Alexander?” he called out as he walked up to the entrance. “Are you awake?”

He heard no words in response, just the slow, even breathing of someone fast asleep.

Jack quietly stepped inside the room. He didn’t try to wake him; instead, he just placed the cup down on the desk before turning to leave. _He’ll see it in the morning._

Just as he reached the doorway, he paused, looking back into the darkened room. In that moment, not caring that he would be the only one to hear his words, he said, “Good night, my love.”

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are my motivation, so if you have anything to say about the story - praise, constructive criticism, just plain criticism, you name it - please tell me. I'd greatly appreciate any input you can give me.


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